Amazon Fire TV vs Amazon Fire Stick — What’s the difference?

Amazon has decided that Google’s Chromecast is in need of some proper competition, and so the Fire Stick was announced to fill the void. This is good news for everybody, but it raises a few questions for those who either already own an Amazon Fire TV or now have to choose between a Fire TV and a Fire Stick for their streaming media needs.

Based on the descriptions offered by Amazon, you may find yourself wondering whether or not the Fire Stick is just a Fire TV in a smaller and less expensive package. While the $100 Fire TV seems to offer the same features as the $40 Fire TV Stick, you get a lot more hardware. The Fire Stick lacks things like optical out and ethernet for home theater setups, and doesn’t come with the $30 voice controller. Instead you get a less capable controller and the ability to use voice through an Android app that will be available at launch. If you take a look at the specs for these two devices, you can see that this is just the top of the iceberg.

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Amazon’s quad-core Fire TV is significantly more capable than the Fire Stick, which means it will be able to play the entire Amazon games library. The Fire Stick will still be able to play most of the simple mobile games that are available through Amazon, but performance will be noticeably different. Complex, high demand games will still be played best on the Fire TV. Amazon is focusing on portability and convenience with the Fire Stick by promising support in places like hotel rooms and college dorms. These are places where Google’s Chromecast, as well as nearly every other streaming device, currently struggles.

The important thing for most people is going to be whether or not you can tell that the Fire TV Stick is somehow less than the Fire TV during usage. For most people, the answer is no. Amazon has been very careful to implement the same user interface on both devices, and scrolling through these interfaces to get to all of your apps and content feels exactly the same. The same goes for voice search, which in our tests had no noticeable difference in response time. The only time where you’ll notice any difference at all is in gameplay, where some titles that are available on both devices will load anywhere from five to ten seconds slower on the Fire TV Stick.

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The 2015 Fire TV Stick

Fire TV Stick

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The Fire TV unboxed

Both the Amazon Fire Stick and the Fire TV are impressive devices that work hard to give you access to a ton of content, but deciding which is for you will depend on how you stream content and through what services. Amazon delivered great things like instant playback for Amazon and Super HD playback for Netflix on the Fire TV, as well as a decent gaming experience if you really like mobile games. If you’re interested in the best possible video streaming experience, the Fire TV is going to be the way to go. If portability and price are big focal points for you, especially during the 50% off promotion during the two days following the Fire Stick announcement, Amazon’s latest streaming rig is the way to go.